Lockdown has been tough for some; whilst everything transitioned online, Disabled people have suffered. For those with a sensory loss, it has been a hard time if the content isn’t accessible. For those that have any form of hearing loss, subtitles are vital. For those with any form of sight loss, Audio Description is equally important… especially if you have image-heavy slides or walls of text that others are reading.
Having attended hundreds of “Zoom” and “Teams” sessions since the pandemic began, it has shown me that there is still a long way to go. Organisations still have some work to do, and need to ensure that their sessions are fully accessible.
I had the pleasure of working with a local Disability Charity to do some COVID-19 research on a fixed term contract, and put my media experience to good use at the same time; I introduced both the charity and local VI community to the concept of audio described PowerPoint slides. They really went down a storm.
It was merely a matter of getting an audio file which contained the audio description to play with each slide by using the transitions / automation built in. I’ve used a couple of different platforms to do text to speech; my favourite being listnr, and secondly lovo.
If you don’t want to use Text to Speech, you can even record your own voice… that link also shows you how to add the audio to the slide.
Edit: Something to bear in mind: by embedding media into the file, your filesize will likely increase to the point that you need to use dropbox or some other file transfer website to send the file to others.
If you want someone to make your content accessible, get in touch as i’m available and open to work.